Durham University, where the son of the governor of Vietnam’s state-owned bank studied. Cumbrian businessman Bill Lowther is alleged to have made corrupt payments to cover university fees. Photograph: Ken Peck/Alamy

Anti-bribery investigators are prosecuting a British businessman for allegedly conspiring to corruptly pay for the son of a top-ranking foreign official to be educated at Durham University in a clandestine deal to land a profitable contract.

The Serious Fraud Office has charged a 71-year-old Cumbrian businessman, Bill Lowther, as part of a growing bribery investigation that has seen a string of prosecutions, arrests and raids across three continents over suspected multi-million-pound payments spanning a decade.

The SFO, along with police in Australia and Asia, has been investigating alleged corrupt conduct by a banknote printing firm that is half-owned by a company based in a small Cumbrian market town.

The SFO confirmed that Lowther was charged on 8 September with taking part in a conspiracy to help secure a university place for the son of the then governor of Vietnam's state-owned bank, and paying his fees and accommodation costs.

Lowther is due to appear at City of Westminster magistrates court in London on Tuesday 20 September.

The SFO and Australian police allege that the Securency executives bribed Le Duc Thuy, the then bank governor, to induce him to award the firm a contract to print Vietnam's currency in 2003.

His son, Le Duc Minh, completed a postgraduate course at the university's business school in 2003-4.

This summer the Guardian tracked down the son in Hanoi. He denied his education was funded through corrupt payments and said both the fees for his studying and his living costs while at Durham, totalling more than £10,000, were paid by his family.

He said: "I believe that none of my school friends or lecturers at Durham ever thought that I looked like a rich boy at school."

Lowther is the first to be charged by the SFO during its investigation into Securency. The investigation came out into the open last October when the SFO arrested and later bailed Lowther and four other individuals, and raided eight homes across the UK and an office.

Lowther, a former Securency director, has been awarded a OBE and CBE during his business career as well as an honorary knighthood from the king of Belgium, according to a local press report.

After his arrest he resigned as deputy chairman of Innovia Films, a specialist manufacturer in Wigton, Cumbria which owns half of Securency.

Both Innovia and the Australian central bank, which owns the other half of Securency, have been trying to sell their stakes in the firm since last November.